


Soul-Bound

by cadkitten



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Canonical Character Death, Demons, Exorcisms, Gen, Ghosts, Magic, Mother Nature - Freeform, Necromancy, Possession, Rituals, Soul Bond, Speaking with Dead, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 05:29:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20651960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadkitten/pseuds/cadkitten
Summary: Tim can see ghosts. It's not glamorous or exciting or any of the good things. Mostly it's just a fucking pain in the ass he has to deal with every day of his life. That, and they always want something.





	Soul-Bound

**Author's Note:**

> For JayTimWeek Urban Fantasy - Magic  
Forgive the tense if it does anything weird. I wrote it too close to the due date to hand it to an editor and I started it in a tense I rarely work in and then had to change it after the fact when my hands kept typing in the other tense further on.

Gotham is colder than it's ever been. Granted, he's only been here a short period of time, but all the papers are saying it's _unseasonably_ cold, which Tim has decided is code for something they're not saying. Tucking himself further into his jacket and hunching over gives him some protection for his frozen ears. He listens to the sound of his footfalls on the pavement as he puts one foot in front of the other and keeps going.

Tim walked a good three blocks and then paused to check the map on his watch again, hesitating at the street signs that are supposed to mark this intersection. His watch clearly shows it should be Maple and Elm but unless his eyes are deceiving him, he could have sworn the actual signs behind him had read 13th and Elm. Blinking, Tim swiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket and turned back to the signs, squinting up at them in the pre-dawn light, watching the words swim in and out, between 13th and Maple.

The thought occurred to him that he really should be taking better care of himself and if nothing else, he needs to sleep more often than he is. College was a pain in the ass and he needed to ensure he passed, but hallucinations were at the bottom of his list of things he wanted to have happening to him. Sighing, Tim glanced at his watch again and decided to believe what it was telling him. Turning right onto Maple, he hunkered back down into his jacket, prepared to make the half mile uphill trek toward this guy's house where there was supposedly a scooter for sale

Leaves crunched under foot as Tim deftly avoided the patches of black ice on the sidewalk. The hill felt as though it were ever-steepening and by the time Tim made it to where the little red flag on his map informed him the house should be, he's beyond winded, panting from the cold and from the hill. He could have sworn he used to be in better shape than this. Could have almost sworn he was _yesterday_. 

He blamed the cold, given it always seemed to make things worse. Stepping onto the concrete of the driveway, Tim watched as the wind kicked up the leaves in the guy's yard, making them spiral up into the air. Dust devils aren't supposed to happen around here, but then again, what does he know? He's only been here a few months and given he doesn't understand the physics surrounding them, it's entirely possible they _can_ happen here and the arbitrary decision that they can't is just some vapid rumor.

Covering his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket, Tim squinted through the dust and leaves, carefully picking his way onto the porch. The plants on the porch are long dead and Tim gave them a sympathetic eye as he's ringing the doorbell. It doesn't ring like he expected: it buzzes and he's reminded of the trip his class took to the state penitentiary a few years ago. It adds something eerie to the air and he has to shove the thought back down before it gives him the chills. 

Tim heard the way the boards creaked and groaned under the occupant's weight rather than their footfalls. The deadbolt ground as it unlatched and Tim thought it could probably use some graphite. 

The door swung open and the man before him only vaguely resembled a man: a disheveled head of hair and a deeply hollowed set of eyes stared out at him. Tim fought not to shrink back him, telling himself the guy had to have some sort of horrible sickness to look like this. Honestly, he looked _dead_ or dead inside at the very least. 

"I'm here about the scooter?" The instant the words left his mouth, Tim took note that he didn't _see_ a scooter anywhere on the property. There wasn't a garage and the driveway only held an old beat up pickup and the scent of leaking motor oil. "Ah... I'm guessing you already sold it. I apologize for wasting your time," Tim murmured, taking note of the way his feet had taken him over and were backing him off the guy's porch.

The guy reached out one pale hand and Tim nearly tripped over himself as he stumbled off the porch and turned to flee down the driveway, only half trying not to look like he was running away. But he was. Running away, that was.

He heard the guy say something and the crumbling what's-left of his voice refused to form any actual words inside his head. Tim's legs and feet moved faster as he bolted out onto the sidewalk. There were no cars coming or going, not even parked along the street or in anyone's driveways. There were no kids or pets and no Halloween decorations despite the fact that Halloween was only a week away.

His heart pounded in his chest as he ran down the street, thankful he was going downhill this way. Vaguely he noted that it didn't seem nearly as steep downhill as it had uphill.

Tim hit Maple and Elm and it felt like the world opened back up and abruptly gave him people again. There were cars everywhere, people in every direction, the crush and carry of the city surrounding him. He held onto the street sign and shivered, closing his eyes and telling himself he'd imagined it all. It was just fear that created what he'd just seen, that was it. Some newly birthed form of social anxiety or something.

Tim pried his fingers off the signpost and glanced up at the sign, watching it shimmer to 13th again. Tim closed his eyes, felt something grip his heart and he sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose and then opened his eyes, looking at his watch, flicking the tiny screen until it showed him where 13th really was. He set it as his next destination and felt a tiny bit of relief about the log resting up in the Cloud somewhere, a little footpath back to where he was going.

Five blocks brought him to 13th and Tim turned right more from whim than anything else. He walked up the hill feeling oddly like it was the one he just traversed; the only difference the industrial district looming up around him instead of quaint little _silent_ townhouses. He walked just as many steps until he felt like he was worn out and all his athleticism had drained out his feet on the way up. He paused, certainty in his gut and he turned, looking up at what used to be a warehouse, only a burned out shell of its former shitty glory. 

Old police tape flickered, rattling in the wind. At Tim watched, a dust devil kicked up, spiraling leaves and trash up into the air, just as it had in front of the creepy guy's house. His heart thudded in his chest as he took a few tentative steps toward the lot, the certainty that he was being told something overshadowing any caution he'd normally have had. He reminded himself there was no creepy man, just the leaves and the wind and Tim himself.

He walked into the center of the swirling leaves and knelt to look at a small concrete plaque the dancing leaves had unearthed. His hands brushed over the surface, pushing dirt out of the way until the letters carved into it were clear. _J and T_. His heart thudded and his vision blurred and for one instant Tim swore he felt an unbearable heat ripple through him. He cried out, yanking his hand away from the plaque, pain rippling through him.

Tim stumbled back and ended up seated on his ass, watching as the leaves all neatly fell back into place over the plaque. He watched as they shimmered and drifted lazily back down and from the midst of it, there stood a boy completely similar in age to him, perhaps a few years younger.

He closed his eyes and sighed, wishing for the thousandth time that this didn't keep happening to him everywhere he moved. It really shouldn't have been a surprise given this was Gotham: a city known for its blood. The streets and walls and every fucking breath the city takes paved with it. 

Standing up, Tim brushed his hands off on his jeans, pushing his hair back from in front of his eyes. He crossed his arms and regarded his new ghost. "We can skip the creepy and the haunting shit. I can see you, I can probably hear you if you try hard enough. Just tell me who killed you, how, and how to prove it and... I'll do my thing."

The boy's eyes were sad, the slump of his shoulders sadder still. He looked like he was a million miles away if not for the shimmer of tears Tim can see in his eyes.

"I wish I were still dead."

Tim blinked. This was a new one. He squinted at what he was absolutely positive was a ghost and then held out his hand. "If you're not then touch me."

The boy gave him a sad little smile. "Can't... I'm not really here. I mean, I'm _here_, but part of me isn't."

Tim moved back to the plaque, close enough to know he could see right through this boy's body and knelt down again, reaching out to brush the leaves back. He didn't get a single one moved before the boy's quiet voice stopped him, "I wouldn't do that again."

He glanced up to find the boy standing closer than he expected. "Part of me is attached to that. I think it happened," he gestured at the building. "I wasn't strong then, not like I am now. It feels like yesterday, but it also feels like years ago. It's hard to tell like this. Harder to tell where the other part of me is. In the dark... the dripping noises... so much of nothing."

"Can you take me to the rest of you?" Tim asked the question as he stood up, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. He did his best to ignore that he was talking to a damn ghost.

"I don't know where I am." The boy sounded distant, forlorn. He watched him flicker and held out his hand again. "You're fading. If you want me to solve this, you have to bind to me. Use my energy until I've solved it and then..." he shrugged. Sometimes these ghosts didn't like to hear about moving on, about letting go or passing on or any of that stuff. He let it hang in the air and he noted it was with reluctance that the boy held out his hand and brushed fingers with him.

He felt the snap and spark that came with casually touching a ghost, the near static electricity of the bond as it was formed, and he dropped his hand, staring at the ground between them as he let his mind fill up with all the things this boy still had left.

His name: Jason Todd. Who he'd been: son of two pieces of shit parents, adopted by Bruce Wayne after he tried to rob him while he was in his car at the tender age of 13. Thirteen. Tim closes his eyes and holds onto it. It was significant in Jason's life. 13th Street, age of 13. It was likely he also died on the 13th or perhaps on the thirteenth day or week or month of something significant for him. These things usually came in threes. 

He let the flashes keep coming, broken fragments of a boy full of life and joy and _hope_. He watched him jogging with a large yellow dog, saw his first time stealing some of Bruce's scotch, the first day at a private high school - the uniform starched and itchy, the collar too tight, the hand like a vice around his throat, the beating as he took it against his middle and sides, the snap of a broken leg, the blood trickling down his face and the world sideways and rolling out of control. A pair of brown loafers, hideous purple slacks, something metal and solid impacting bone again and again. Heat. Fire. Explosion.

Tim came back to himself kneeling on the sidewalk a few paces from where he'd been, retching up what little he'd had for lunch. His hands hurt on the gravel and grit and his teeth felt like they were vibrating in his damn jawbone. This, too, was somewhat normal. In his absorption of another's spirit into his own for the sake of solving these things, he tended to get the horrific privilege of reliving their deaths right along with them. He'd gotten used to the feelings making him vomit after the first half dozen times.

Standing, he spit a few times and then wiped at his mouth with the hem of his sleeve, turning away from the mess he'd just left on the concrete. Jason was crouched by the plaque, tears streaming down his face, his hands buried in his hair.

Tim went to him and reached out, slid his hand into the center of the ghost's being and hauled him upright by sheer force of will. He let go and they stared at each other. "Every time you relive it, so do I. Let's not make this harder on each other than it has to be." He pointed at the boy. "You're Jason." Then at himself. "I'm Tim."

Turning away, he marched past where he'd been kneeling and on down the street. "I'm going to be late and miss the delivery lady if we don't get a move on. Now that I've found you, you're stuck with me. Get used to it."

He could feel Jason fall in line behind him and he walked with purpose now, not caring about the biting wind or the chill in the air. He had a reason to exist again, a task, and for Tim: tasks meant life. 

\---

Three days brought more frustration than ease in regards to pretty much everything. With Jason trailing after him, Tim was eternally freezing, even in the near scalding showers he tended to take when he was - by all rights - haunted. He shook and shivered and fought it all back down while trying to tell his body it was wrong and this was all just an illusion. His focus was shit and his classes alternating between boring and downright unintelligible despite how easy they'd been for him just days ago. This, he knew, was a byproduct of living with someone else's brain melded right up against his own, trapped inside his skull like a festering cancer.

He felt ill most of the time, a vague unease in the zone of his stomach, though that was only the same as coping with anxiety was every single day of his life. If anything it was just more constant and less of a nuisance than usual. The one thing that annoyed him the most was his sense of taste whenever he had a ghost pinned to him. He always started liking whatever they'd liked to eat and hating the things they hated. In this case, it was coffee Jason clearly didn't like and unfortunately it was coffee that kept Tim upright and living most of the time.

It was with little surprise he found himself at a convenience store on the outskirts of Gotham buying every flavor of energy drink they had. Behind him, Jason stood shimmering in a rack of tortilla chips, looking about as lost as Tim expected him to. Ghosts were finicky things, tended to rise and fall in mood at the drop of a hat, and whenever they went someplace they hadn't in life, they would just stand unmoving somewhere in the center of the room until they got used to it. Jason still wasn't used to Tim's place and he certainly wasn't used to being here. 

Tim paid and tucked the cans into his backpack, zipped it up and stepped out onto the busy sidewalk, paying Jason no mind at all. He was attached, he'd either come or he'd be snapped to Tim's location soon enough. Pushing his hair back from his face, Tim kept a steady pace for a few miles, shivering when he felt Jason's presence with him again just before he stepped into the graveyard where Jason's body was supposedly buried. It was semi-private, only used by Gotham's elite, and if he hadn't known Bruce Wayne had taken Jason in before he'd died, he would have wondered what a guy like Jason was doing buried amongst the snobbiest of snobs. 

He weaved his way amongst the various headstones and plaques, careful not to step on anywhere he deemed an actual grave, pausing occasionally to right anything he saw that had been tipped over. He came to an elegant marble headstone and paused, kneeling down and studying the inscription. Jason Peter Todd-Wayne. Beloved Son. The dates of Jason's birth and his death - some years before - bore witness to his end. Tim hummed softly, reaching down and pushing both hands against the drying brown grass and the rich soil and closing his eyes. He took a deep breath and murmured, "Jason, take us down there to see if any of you is in here."

He felt like he was being suctioned, his soul piped right out through his fingertips and slammed into the dirt for all of a few seconds and then he was falling back on his ass and trying not to retch as nausea swelled up around him. He swallowed a few dozen times, determined not to defile such a place as this, and slowly stood, looking up at Jason's shimmering form and the saddened look on his face.

"C'mon then... now that we know you're not here." Tim turned and led the way out of the cemetery, Jason's ghost closer than usual behind him. 

Their next stop would be harder on Jason than anything else had been so far. The walk was monumental and it was nearly dark by the time they reached the iron gates surrounding the Wayne estate. Tim buzzed at the gate and an elderly man's voice crackled over the speaker, asking who was calling. 

"Tim Drake. I'll only take a few minutes of your time, but I have something I think you'd like to know."

There was silence for a minute and then the gate latch clicked and it rumbled back out of the way just enough for Tim to slip through. Behind him, the sound of it closing once more left him feeling a little caged in. Jason shimmered pleasantly on his left, nearly leading the way up the driveway and toward the main entrance of the house. 

The door opened before they got to it and Tim took in the kindly-looking older gentleman that stepped aside to welcome them in. He silently led Tim down the elegantly manicured hallway to a sitting room where Mr. Wayne was settled behind a massive oak desk. Tim waited on Jason to take one of the seats and then took the other, watching the way the ghost leaned forward toward the man who'd taken on the role of father for him in his final few years. He saw the earnest pleasure in his face and he relaxed, nearly certain Mr. Wayne hadn't had a hand in Jason's death.

"Tim... Drake, did you say?"

Tim smiled pleasantly at Mr. Wayne, bobbing his head and forcing his mind to focus on him for the moment. "It's a pleasure, Mr. Wayne. I see your name all over the university." He gestured vaguely with one hand, knowing it took the focus off his nervous smile. "Or at least in the places I tend to exist while there. Martha Hall and the library that has a huge plaque with your name on it for having helped build it. Good things you do for this city..." he trailed off, hoping he'd inflated the guy's ego enough he might buy some time with him.

Mr. Wayne sat back, removing glasses Tim was almost certain he didn't really need and placing them on the blotter in front of him. "Bruce, please."

Tim nodded like he knew he was supposed to, echoing, "Bruce."

"Mr. Pennyworth indicated you had something I'd like to know?"

Tim glanced at Jason as the ghost stood up and rounded the desk. He flicked his gaze to Bruce, watched him shift ever so slightly as the chill of a ghost so very close came over him. He watched closely as Bruce's gaze shifted almost imperceptibly toward Jason, hesitated, and then swung back to Tim.

Tim relaxed. "You see him, then." He let himself lean back in the chair, at ease now that he knew he had one of his own in the room with him. "Maybe not as well as I do - since he's bound to me right now - but you see him. A shimmer in the corner of your eye, something you think you saw and then your brain tries to ignore in favor of some science-y truth or other. It's harder to ignore it when they ask you for help like they do me." He reached up and passed his hand over his mouth, let it fall to his lap while he gazed directly at Jason instead of Bruce. "I'll be blunt. Someone killed your son. It was no freak explosion like the papers say it was. Freak explosions don't leave panicked ghosts behind that change street signs so I find them and warn me off terrifying men's lawns. Pretty sure this dude, J. Okerman has something to with it, too. I went to buy a scooter and the whole streets is like something out of a nightmare. Silent and dying and it was like I was on another planet. Plus... there was no scooter and the dude looks like he's death warmed over himself. And... purple pants. The same purple pants Jason showed me on accident when I first touched his soul." Tim closed his eyes, let the vision swim before them. Loafers, purple pants, metal impacting bones. _Thump, thump, thump_. Agony and pain and then searing fire.

He opened his eyes and found Mr. Wayne simply staring at where Jason stood shimmering by his side. One hand was tight around a pen, resting on his blotter, the other hovering a mere inch from Jason's outstretched hand. 

"Let him touch you... might help us figure this out. He says... he doesn't think he's... well..."

"Fully dead." Mr. Wayne's voice sounded lost, very nearly broken as he reached for Jason's hand. Their fingers met and clasped and Tim watched Jason's lips curve upwards in a small hesitant smile. He watched Mr. Wayne's features break in agony. "It's my fault. There was this man who claimed he could bring back the dead. I traveled the world after Jason's death - looking, hoping the rumors were right, that there was some holy grail of eternal life that could bring Jason back to me. I grieved so deeply, so completely that I changed into someone I barely recognized. The head of this... organization," the way he said it made Tim understand it probably had something to do with the darker parts of magic, "promised me he could bring Jason back. He warned me he wouldn't be entirely the same, that I'd have to have patience and teach him how to be what he once was, that it'd be hard for everyone involved. I didn't care how much work it was for me, I just wanted my son back."

Tim sighed, crossed one leg over the other and let his arms loosely drape over the arms of the chair. "You tried to raise the dead."

Bruce nodded, the pained look on his face increasing by measure. "And I failed."

"I'm not so sure you did."

"What we brought back was not Jason. Something else had taken control of his body, leapt into him before the ritual could be finished... or at least that's the best I can deduct from all the research I've done since then. A demon of some sort, perhaps. We couldn't do anything about it and I..." he trailed off and shook his head.

Jason slowly let go of Mr. Wayne's hands and came to stand beside Tim instead. He flickered in and out and then burned brighter than he had since Tim had been bound with him. "I'm here. He kept me... my body, at least. There's darkness and it's damp and dripping water."

Tim considered his options, considered if he was walking into an elegantly weaved trap between ghost and perhaps master. Considered if he'd die if he followed this path.

He took a deep breath and stood. "Take me to his body."

Mr. Wayne stood and Tim noted from the corner of his eye, the older gentlemen who'd let them in disappear into another room. Mr. Wayne stepped to the clock behind his desk, opened the front of it and did something inside that caused it to swing outward. He descended into the darkness and Tim chose his path and followed.

They moved down slick stone stairs into the darkness for what seemed like forever, the only sounds those of their breathing and their feet upon the steps. Tim's hand trailed over the wall to his right and a degree of certainty told him there was a drop to his death on his left if he veered off path by even a little. 

Hundreds of steps later Tim heard a faint crack and a small light stick illuminated the cavern around them. Above them, perhaps hundreds of feet up he heard bats rustling and there, in the center of the room stood an iron cage, surrounded by a salt circle and various chalked magical protection spells. Within the cage walls the reality of Jason's body sat: pristine and clean and wrapped in a slate gray suit and red tie. Tim shivered at the sight, watched Jason's ghost stalk around the outside of the circle and then shy away, fear on his youthful face.

Tim stepped past the sigils and carefully over the salt line and stood just outside the iron bars, arms crossed, face passive as the demon wearing Jason as a suit came to stand on just the other side, his head cocked, his hands moving to grasp the bars between them. Something dark passed over it's eyes and when it leaned forward, Tim expected the sultry laugh and the barely whispered provocative line it delivered in Jason's voice. 

Tim slowly walked around the cage, murmuring to himself in a way that had always come naturally to him. He never thought on what to do when things got this bad, he just allowed the universe to work through his mouth and tongue and fingertips. It was possession in its own right and given how often he was taken by ghosts, it was nothing to be taken by nature herself. As he walked, the earth beneath him bore lichen and flowers more befitting the world above him than this darkness below. Every pass around the cage birthed more and more until he was walking through a field, his voice a low murmur.

It was only vaguely that Tim realized Jason was leading Mr. Wayne around the circle in opposition to him, echoing his words. He reached out and allowed a piece of himself to bind with Mr. Wayne as well, allowed his voice to breathe from his voice box as well. The plants began to grow on the outside of the circle as well, more and more of them until it was difficult to walk, nearly impossible to press forward through the thicket he'd created. Still, he walked onward, still he murmured word after word and when he stepped to the side and passed his foot over the salt circle, it was intentional. 

The cage shattered and Jason's ghost swooped past Tim with purpose, plunged into his own body, and Tim clasped the demon wearing Jason's body with his left hand, his right reaching for Mr. Wayne. Their hands clasped and anchored, Tim tipped his head back, opened his mouth, and let his soul release, tension alone holding his corporeal body up. 

Here, like this, he always felt free. It was so rare he found the chance to indulge, to exist on such a level and when he did, it was with great pleasure. He took his time, idly plucking the strings of the demon away from Jason's body, one by one snapping them free with his fingertips until only one remained. He paused, smiled at the wild-eyed rage of the demon and pinched away the last fragment of his attachment, watching him vanish into thin air. 

Just as carefully, Tim tucked Jason back into his body and began the arduous process of reattaching each of those strands. One after another, he tucked and tampered, pinned and prodded, until Jason was whole again.

Almost lazily, he drifted back to his own body, sliding inside in a way he knew had always only been like half holding onto himself. He reattached the threads he could and let the others go with apathy that felt coldly familiar as he sucked in a breath that felt suspiciously like his first all over again.

He released Jason and then Mr. Wayne and then sat down hard on the floor, slowly curling in on himself, his head throbbing and his lungs burning. His hands shook and his stomach threatened to heave with every breath. He managed a quiet, "He's your Jason again," before his vision parted into two and his eyes rolled back and he was out before he ever hit the floor.

\----

It could have been hours or days by the time Tim swam back into consciousness. He found himself in an unfamiliar bed, in a room he had no recollection of. The scent of bacon drifted to him from somewhere outside of the room and his stomach rumbled, reminding him he hadn't eaten before visiting Mr. Wayne's estate. 

That thought brought him fully into the world of the waking and he sat up abruptly, air sucking in his lungs and his eyes snapping open wide. Jason sat on a comfortable looking lounger beside his bed, one foot up on the plush material, the other dangling a few inches above the ground. He shut the paperback he was holding and settled it on the dresser beside him.

"I suppose this is where I endure a million questions from you now, isn't it?"

Tim stared at him long enough Jason shifted uncomfortably and Tim watched the ghost within him pull and tug and settle beneath the skin he now wore. He held one hand out to Jason. "Take the rest of yourself back. You can't reattach fully without it."

Jason slid to the edge of his chair and their fingertips touched, but nothing happened. Tim's brow creased as he tried to help shove Jason back into himself. He gave a perplexed little huff when it didn't work and lifted his head to find Jason smiling a bit sadly at him.

"I won't take the rest back. I don't want to."

"You have to."

"No... I don't." Jason sat back, crossing his arms over his chest and fixing Tim was a stubborn look. "I did my research while I was up in that brain of yours and I know what will happen to you if I do. If I don't, I'll be okay, just... sort of... dizzy I guess? Maybe a bit sickly, but nothing we can't deal with. I mean Bruce has heaps of money, so I'll be fine. You..." Jason shook his head. "You won't be if I pull it all back. Every time you do this it breaks you a little more. You've gotta stop, man."

Tim stared at him and then slowly lowered himself back down against the most comfortable pillow he'd ever encountered in his life and closed his eyes. Jason was right, every time took a little more out of him, snatched away a fragile bit more of his sanity and self-preservation. He was already so close to that edge Jason was probably right that this would be the one that tipped him over. He murmured, "Did you turn over the evidence I know you have on who killed you?"

Jason picked up a paper from the nightstand and tossed it on Tim's chest. "He's been arrested on account of all the evidence against him. His prints and DNA matched the shit from the crime scene. Just he wasn't in the database before, nothing to point the finger at him until... well... let's say we fixed it."

Tim hummed softly, turned onto his side and held his hand out like he had the one night he'd slept since he'd begun harboring Jason in his brain. Solid fingers linked with his and Tim sagged into the bed in relief, his brain ceasing the incredible pain he endured day after day unless he anchored to a ghost like this. He opened his eyes just enough to watch Jason's ghost, restless within his body, shifting while his body didn't. He saw the strands he'd missed, ached to reattach them himself but knew they would over time, grasp onto Jason once again.

This bringing people back from the dead shit was risky anyway. Fragile at best. 

He was just thankful it worked in this one case. Thankful he'd moved to Gotham and he'd gone to see about some fake scooter and thankful he put his life on the line for these kinds of things. He closed his eyes and he wondered just how long it would be until Bruce Wayne asked the stranger in their midst to leave.

He hoped it'd be a long time.


End file.
